Oh - something else I'be been up to. Every year a pair of Mockingbirds make a nest in a pyrocanthus tree outside my study window. It's berry bearing thorn tree for those who don't know. Usually a good place to make baby birds since the cats can't get up there.

Now - as some of you may recall - I rather detest Mockingbirds. They're a noisy, pushy invasive species where I live and they really ought to move along back wherever they came from. The bachelor birds set up camp in trees along our street every 3 or 4 houses every summer and practice trying to drown one another out from sundown to sun-up. I throw rocks, I use the garden hose, I cajole, I threaten. Earlier this year, I laughed like a madwoman when a Red Shouldered Hawk flew over my yard ands grabbed one of those bachelors, eating him literally alive on my roof. I even snapped photos to preserve the memory.

Well, this year Mommy & Daddy mockingbird had a baby and it was cute. Very cute. I got attached. It's the fault of my housewren Louise and her husband Antoine because they chose to have their clutch in a out of service hollow lightpole nextdoor. Had they had their normal 5 babies on my porch again, I wouldn't have gone all maternal on the baby mockingbird I named "Hopalong" because he liked to hop around the tree and on the ground.

In spent several weeks rescuing my cat Inky from the dive-bombing parents and rescuing Hopalong from ill-advised trips to the ground below the tree. I even left food for his doting parents. I must have put their baby back in the tree 40 or 50 times. He was just getting big enough to fly well when....

The whoosh of very large wings was heard and hopalong screamed bloody murder. The red shouldered Hawk had swoped down from above and made off with him. His parents tried to kill the cats for a day or so and then just flew away.

Next year, remind me not to get all silly over the baby mockingbirds. Hopalong get et by the hawk last week and I'm still sad. Yesterday I found his cousin barely clinging to life in the front yard, the result of a cat attack. I put him back in Hopalongs old nest and he seems to have recovered. I don't know if he's gonna make it though.

I should just hang out here right - and stop caring about silly baby mockingbirds?